elrond amandil writes
"James Randi offered US$ 1 million to anyone who can prove that a pair of $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables is any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables 'danceable,' Randi called it 'hilarious and preposterous.' He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, 'they would be paranormal.'"

There isn't any way to prove one is better than the other since sound quality is objective. However, as the owner of overpriced speaker cable (although not nearly this overpriced), an improvement in audio quality is very achievable by upgrading connections. Feeding a $50 speaker with a $7,000 cable or a $2 cable makes no difference, but if the speaker is say...$30,000 then there would be a huge difference. Not even Mr. Randi could dispute that.

The good ones are the 'power cleaners' that reconfigure your mains power!
Of course you can't hear the difference straight away because your equipement has to relearn how to work on the clean power so you have to use them for a few weeks to hear any difference.

The good ones are the 'power cleaners' that reconfigure your mains power!
Of course you can't hear the difference straight away because your equipement has to relearn how to work on the clean power so you have to use them for a few weeks to hear any difference.

I can't say I have ever heard that one. You would think that claims like that would raise some red flags to pretty much anyone.

while sitting on the couch with a laptop I lost control.. It (the laptop) went bonkers, when I got it all back the title to this thread hqd been deleted! I just barely saw it, I know it was about James Blandi. Sorry for the disruption!

Ok, I now have my contacts in and have corrected my other error. It is Randi, not Blandi....sheesh Murphy has me by the....

Staff: Admin

I have only owned one Monster Cable. It was a free upgrade for my fairly pricey vocal mike. No biggie, but it was a nice heavy cable that resisted tangling on stage.

I have a pretty impressive stereo, and my speakers are fed through the largest-diameter zip-cord that will fit in the connectors. Having built, restored, and repaired quite a number of tube amps over the years, I can tell you that the speaker wire is about the last thing I'd lose sleep over. Much more important is the quality of the components early on in the signal chain, because signal degradation cause by such components gets amplified over and over again.

Randi isn't a dummy. I think his money is pretty safe. Like I said, I've spent a lot of time and effort fixing up tube amps. Randi is safe and the chislers are dead.

That, or he's a partner in the company selling the cables and stands to make more than $1million if people are inspired by this scheme to run out and buy these cables just to see if they can get $1 million for just a $7250 investment.

Staff: Mentor

There isn't any way to prove one is better than the other since sound quality is objective.

I think you mean subjective, but in any case, you can always do a double-blind taste-test and see which tests better. I'd also be willing to bet money (not a million dollars) that the difference is not statistically significant.